Negotiations for a new KU agreement start in early February. As an indication of their commitment to ensuring that their early childhood teachers’ salaries are close to parity with teachers in schools, KU have increased salaries and allowances by 3% from January 2018. A four year trained teacher at the top of the scale in a KU service will now receive $96,610 if working in a preschool and $100,471 if working in a long day care centre.
KU teachers’ salaries are some of the highest salaries in the sector in NSW. The Union does have a number of agreements where early childhood teachers’ salaries are same as teachers in schools.
While the IEU welcomes the increase, KU teachers have raised a number of workload issues that they want addressed in the new agreement including:
• increases in allowances, including director’s allowance
• a limit on after hours meetings for preschool teachers
• non contact time to be timetabled and teachers replaced with relief staff
• professional development days for teachers
• limit on meetings and parents’ nights, and
• domestic violence leave.
The Union looks forward to negotiating a fair and reasonable outcome for all teachers and directors.